IT Decision Maker

Our Office 365 Experience: Part 2, The Migration

To migrate from Google Apps to Office 365, we decided to try a third-party migration tool. We'd been asked to write a competitive analysis of the available migration options, including the built-in one (which is mainly suitable for migrating from an Exchange Server), so this seemed like a good time to try the options. The process went off perfectly, using a self-service option that cost just $10/mailbox and let our users handle their own migrations simply by entering their old and new passwords into a Web page. Mailbox migrations can take a long, long time. Had we been smarter, we might have opted for an admin-controlled migration rather than the user self-service, because the tool would have enabled us to filter out all the old trash content that Google was hanging on to. As-is, we discovered that Office 365 starts applying bandwidth throttles after a few thousand messages are added to your inbox, meaning each mailbox took almost a full day to migrate. We later learned that office 365 support can suspend those throttles during a migration if you give them a call.

Once migrated, we started the process of adding our custom domain name (ConcentratedTech.com) to Office 365. This is where the process becomes slightly less-awesome. Right now, you can add the domain name easily enough, but it won't become your users' default send-as domain, meaning we were still sending e-mail from the "onmicrosoft.com" domain name associated with our account. Changing that default involves downloading the Office Live PowerShell cmdlets, opening a PowerShell Remoting session to our Office 365 server pod and running a couple of PowerShell cmdlets. This is something you should be aware of if you're considering an O365 move; frankly, given that O365 is largely targeted to SMBs who don't have a large IT staff, I think Microsoft should make this a bit easier and Web-based.

PowerShell cropped up again when we needed to mass-import contacts into the Global Address List (GAL) as external contacts. We used Excel to create a consolidated contact list, and then a couple of PowerShell commands brought that information into the GAL. Again, as big a PowerShell fan as I am, I think this is something that needs to have a Web front-end on it. O365 simply isn't being sold with the "by the way, hope you know how to use PowerShell" message as part of its marketing.